Leaning Out

The common counterargument to all this angst about opportunity lost is that a more aggressive, more activist, more out-front Michelle Obama would have become an immediate and massive political liability for her husband. First ladies must walk a fine line between getting involved and meddling (see: Clinton, Hillary), and Lawless sees this particular first lady’s focus on softer, non-contentious issues as Political Survival 101. “That’s the lesson learned after the Clintons’ experience in 1992: that there are enough reasons for people not to like a president” without his wife becoming an additional flashpoint. As it is, Michelle Obama has consistently enjoyed a level of popularity to which her husband can barely aspire. (Her approval rating has hovered in the 60s, whereas his has now dipped into the low 40s.) While POTUS slugs it out in the partisan trenches of government shutdowns and sequestrations, FLOTUS has managed to remain above the fray—with her toned arms and her veggie garden and her radiant mom-in-chiefness—the rare figure in Washington of whom the American public can still bear the sight. As Lawless sums up the situation, “How can you hate a vegetable garden?”

Besides, say the first lady’s defenders, feminism these days is in the eye of the beholder. Sure, some might prefer a more in-your-face, running-with-the-big-dogs model, aspiring to be the next Hillary Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg, but others see the movement as having moved on to be all about personal fulfillment and choices. As an exemplar of this version, they insist, Michelle is doing the lord’s work. “She’s the embodiment of a power mom,” gushes Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, founder of MomsRising.org. “She uses her role both as First Mom and First Lady to advocate for families and children. She sets an important example.” Former White House communications director Anita Dunn offers (unsurprisingly) an even glossier view. “What is wrong in this day and age with a woman who’s a highly successful, accomplished woman being proud to be a mother? If we can’t accept the fact that that’s really a good thing, then we actually haven’t come all that far.”

Most delicately, there’s the defense that Michelle Obama must tread lightly to avoid being stereotyped as an Angry Black Woman—an image critics were clearly itching to saddle her with early in the 2008 campaign. “Black women are perceived as more argumentative, contentious, fists in the air,” Walker argues. In grappling with those perceptions, she says, “I wouldn’t necessarily say Michelle Obama had to kowtow to some demand that she become a June Cleaver type. I would say she understands the need to help people understand a model that they may not have been familiar with, and to help them learn how to trust something that they may not have been able to in past.” Then Walker laughs wryly. “You’ve got to be real here. This is America. Our history demands strategy—and grace and finesse. It’s a miracle to me that she’s been able to do it as well as she has.”

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Michelle’s critics acknowledge the delicacy of her position. Even as Hirshman marvels that someone of the first lady’s “capacities and education has done so little of substance,” she posits that the “intersection of race and gender” puts Michelle in a particularly “treacherous” spot. “When you stand at that intersection, you manifest both of the scariest threats to the straight white male establishment in one person. You’re like ground zero.” Hirshman gives Michelle props for having the discipline to “stay out of the range of fire for six years.” She notes that the first lady “had a really hard task, and she handled it with exquisite and superbly canny, disciplined perfection.”

But, adds Hirshman (and the “but” is pretty devastating), “The way she did that was to give, for all intents and purposes, an almost music-hall-level imitation of a warm-and-fuzzy, unthreatening, bucolic female from some imaginary era from the past.”

As for efforts not to be defined by her race, you can only fret about that for so long, argues Goff. “Those of us who are black know what it’s like to have been the only black person in a particular job or in a particular room,” she tells me. And for a while, Goff says, she cut the Obamas slack, assuming they did not want to be accused of being “pro black.” But with the second term well under way, she insists, it’s time for the first couple to step up and tackle touchier issues—especially those that disproportionately impact the black community, such as AIDs and out-of-wedlock births. “Black Americans shouldn’t demand more from [the Obamas], but they also shouldn’t expect less,” Goff says.

Would Michelle Obama finally find herself in political hot water if she wades into more fraught waters? “Probably,” acknowledges Goff. “But so what?! You have the bully pulpit for not much longer.” She urges the first lady: “Give the American people a little bit more credit and have a little bit more courage.”

Then again, encouraging low-income youth to get a college degree isn’t exactly climbing out on a political limb.

In that sense, Goff considers the new education initiative a promising development. “I think it is terrific, refreshing and about time!” she emailed the morning of the announcement. “It is also strategically smart. Many African Americans have long sensed that there are issues this White House has avoided wading into for fear of being seen as favoring the black community. As a result in some ways our community has gotten less policy engagement from the administration of the first black president than other communities, even though we are struggling more.”

Then again, encouraging low-income youth to get a college degree isn’t exactly climbing out on a political limb. While the details may differ, the first lady’s new focus fits neatly in line with her old ones, says Dunn. “She has picked issues with an intersection between the public and private, where organizing from the outside can make a significant difference.” Forget mucking around in legislation or policy arcana, Dunn says. “This is her sweet spot: to raise the importance of an issue to the audiences who need to hear it.”

“She spends her time in areas where she thinks she can really make a difference,” an East Wing official tells me, waving off any suggestion that the first lady is interested in assuming a more out-front position as her time in the White House dwindles. “This is not about spreading herself thin and raising her profile. This is about drilling down and finding areas of opportunity to help people.”

All of which seems to make perfect sense. Of course, Michelle Obama isn’t going to alter her carefully calibrated course going forward, reasons Lawless: “Would you? Everyone likes her. And people that don’t like her don’t like her for reasons that have nothing to do with her.”

Someday somebody will shatter the conventional First Lady mold. It just won’t be Michelle Obama.